It’s Release Day for Last Chance Knit & Stitch
November 19, 2013
I’m celebrating the release date of Last Chance Knit & Stitch with a lot of fun stuff. First all let me announce the winners of the Release Day Giveaway. Congratulations to:
Diane McVetty
Jennifer Essad
Carlol Boyle
Teresa Henson
Natalie Kozaczka
If you didn’t win a copy of the book, you still have lots of chances left. Join me today from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm Eastern Tim at the Facebook Launch Party for Last Chance Knit & Stitch. I’ll be giving away free copies of the book, as well as Barnes & Noble gift cards. There will be trivia and book sightings and lots of fun. So come visit.
You can also win a free copy by visiting Blame it on the Muse, today, November 19, 2013. And the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood on November 20.
I’ll be posting more information about the blog tour shortly.
November 18, 2013
I’m still knitting Faire Isle this week, using Baby Ull fingering yarn for my hat creations. I’ve been using the wonderful book 200 Faire Isle Motifs to design the the color patterns. I just love this book, which my husband gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago, because it gives you the pattens based on how many stitches and rows are repeated.
The book makes the math of figuring out a pattern across a set number of stitches that much easier. The pattern block for the hat below is based on multiples of 4. The small designs elements have just a four stitch repeat in them. The medium sized snow flake has an 8 stitch repeat pattern. And the crown starts out with 32 stitches in it.
This week’s creation also has a wide band at the bottom, so it fits more like a floppy hat than a stocking cap, which is kind of cool, but an unintentional design element. I didn’t use small enough needles for the band at the bottom. So I’m refining the hat pattern, and you’ll see the result in next week’s blog.
In the meantime I’m running out of baby Ull colors, and I’m having to stop myself from running out to the store to buy more. The object of this exercise was to use up the left-overs. But I’m getting so many compliments on the hats from family members that I’m starting to think I need to make hats for everyone as Christmas presents, in addition to sending the ones made in November that I’m sending off to the Hat Box Foundation. So far I’ve been good about staying away from the yarn shop. But I have this feeling my left-over Baby Ull is going to run out before I get to the end of November.
Just a remind
er: Here are the details of the knit-along. I’m collecting hats for the Hat Box Foundation, which donates hand-knit and hand-crocheted hats to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. If you are knitting hats this month for this charity, please take a moment to make a post below about your progress and projects. You can even post pictures of projects in progress.
Also, this is the big release week for Last Chance Knit & Stitch, a novel that prominently features a yarn shop in the story, along with some rather quirky charity knitters known as the Purly Girls. The Purly Girls in the book end up knitting hats for cancer patients, too. So if you love romance and knitting, you might want to pick up a copy this week.
November 11, 2013
I’m 11 days into my Hatbox Foundation knit along, and I’ve been shamelessly indulging my addiction to Faire Isle stranded color work. I have a huge batch of left over bits and pieces of baby yarn — most of it Baby Ull washable merino — and I’ve been using it up by knitting hats inspired by Fair Isle knitting.
I’m still tinkering with my hat design. I’ve knitted a couple that just had a band of color work hearts like this one:
And then I got very ambitious and decided to design a child’s had that had the stranded work from bottom to top. I think this one came out very nice, but it’s a bit smaller than the parameters that the Hatbox Foundation has listed for the circumference of a child’s hat, although it would fit a toddler. So the next one is going to be a little bit bigger, and I’m going to tinker with the design for the crown. So stay tuned, because it will take about a week to knit the hat.
The hat above was knitted on #3 needles out of Baby Ull scraps. What I love about the Baby Ull is that, unlike traditional Shetland wool that you’d use in Fair Isle knitting, the Baby Ull colors are not heather. They are bright and vibrant and that creates a very colorful and fun hat.
Once I get a pattern that I’m happy with, I may post it here and on ravelry.com. In the meantime I have lots of Baby Ull leftovers — enough to carry me through to the end of the knit-along, and probably into December. Looks like people may be getting Fair Isle hats as Christmas presents this year.
If you want to learn more about how to do two color knitting, here’s a great tutorial on the method I use. One point, though, when you’re knitting a hat in the round, you don’t ever have to do the stranded color work on the wrong (purl) side, so it’s super easy because it’s all done with knit stitches. The trick to doing two color stranded work, is to learn how to knit using both the continental and the English style of knitting. Although the hats are made from many colors, each row of knitting uses only two. You just swap out the colors from row to row. The down side, is that when you’re finished you have a lot of yarn ends to weave in, which is a pain. But the results are always so spectacular.
If you would like to contribute a hat to the Hatbox Foundation, please visit this blog post with all the details on the November Charity knit along.
